A truck driver pulled from a head-on collision on the interstate… A veterinary technician side-swiped on her way to work… A victim of a hit and run while on a work trip in Puerto Rico…

Concept Development

Paradigm Outcomes manages complex care for people who have been in serious accidents. The company came to us to create a documentary video and still photography series profiling three of their clients stories and how Paradigm managed their complex care and recovery. We worked with Paradigm in concept development to refine each character-driven narrative. It took a lot of convincing, but we persuaded Paradigm to stick to a single voice for each film and avoid the “talking head” expert video. This soft-sell approach led to a final product that focused on the character instead of company representatives.

Developing the Story

Because we had chosen an emotive and personal approach to telling each story, capturing each subject’s trust was critical… our first step was a phone call. Since these characters were spread out across the United States we needed to get to know their story without having the benefit of meeting them in person. During our pre-interview call with each character we were able to introduce ourselves, the project and what they might expect. Once that was done we began to learn about their story. This is where really active listening becomes critical to building trust and being able to follow the thread of a story and ask probing questions to learn more. As we conduct the pre-interview call we take note of story arch and key phrases that we might want the subject to repeat during production. For example one of our characters who had lost her arm in a traffic accident said “I’m Nancy… My arm’s not Nancy I’m Nancy.” We really loved that line and had her restate it during the interview.

Executing the Vision

Because of the personal nature of each story we used our years of documentary filmmaking experience to continue to build trust and comfort with each subject once we were in their homes shooting. To highlight the uniqueness of each story and the different parts of the country where they took place we wanted to make sure to capture cinematic scenes of each location to personalize each story and root it with a sense of place. We had two days at each location to capture our interview, b-roll scenes with family, care providers and subject and shoot both an environmental and studio style portraits. After spending 2 days with each family we had truly made a personal connection that was reflected in this emotive and touching series.